


One Way or the Other.

by ArianShep



Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Ficlet, Seduction, Suicidal Thoughts, Tearjerker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24157807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArianShep/pseuds/ArianShep
Summary: Post "A Friend In Need."  Xena has died in China, and people are a tad upset about it.01/21, after a bit of RE-deliberation, i took off the non-con warning. i think MiaCooper was right, and i've tagged over-cautiously. i'm trying to get better about tagging extremely specifically in my current 'fic.still, this remains a pretty UNhappy 'fic with a suicidal protagonist.(also, i remain convinced Gabrielle and Ares may have deserved each other.)
Relationships: Ares (Xena)/Gabrielle (Xena)
Kudos: 6





	One Way or the Other.

**Author's Note:**

> a very old ficlet that i've always liked, and - since i decided to start posting some of my fanfiction archive from *mrphfulsnort* years ago (and probably some of my new stuff, eventually) - i had to start somewhere.

The last time she'd felt quite like this... she had just poisoned her own daughter.

It was evening, and the lure of the prow drew her forward, before the wind, before the memories. Looking out over the dark water was dissimilar from looking out over the light. The land where her friend had died was no longer visible, and all was quiet blackness below.

Beckoning.

It would probably annoy Xena, that the deep waters were calling to her. Disappoint her, certainly. Still, what did that matter? At this moment, the water was her entire world. The lapping sound of the waves against the side of the ship was a dirge she wanted to punctuate. She had never felt more utterly alone in her entire life.

"Dark up here."

Gabrielle felt him materialize the instant before he spoke, or she might have fallen down to the cold depths out of sheer fright, rather than jumping out of deliberation. She'd been alone on the ship, quiet, for days. The boat wasn't exactly empty, but none of the sailors would come near her. They insisted - in their strange half-understood tongue - that she was evil luck. Cursed.

Well, obviously.

Gabrielle's voice was rusty with disuse when she spoke. "I wondered if you'd show up." Part of her had expected him much earlier than this. Part of her had expected him to stay away. Part of her had had the tiniest bit of curiosity as to whether he'd wait to appear just in time to stop her jumping off the swiftly moving ship. And maybe he had.

"You know you're not going to jump."

"Do I."

"What about Xena? She's in the Elysian Fields. You'd end up with Hades." The voice turned mocking. "Parted forever." Then the velvet voice firmed, roughened. "You won't do it."

"Xena's gone. We can't be any more parted. And she had her say. It was her decision to die, herself. She doesn't get to decide for me, now."

The dim figure moved closer, made a declamatory noise. "Yes she does."

Gabrielle bit her lip and remained facing the water. Wind blew the hair that wasn't bound forward past the hair that was, tips just barely managing to sting her face. Her hair had gotten longer again. She'd been about to chop it off when they were pulled east, and right after it seemed cliche' to have it shorn: a too-common mourning gesture. She had thought about letting it grow instead, perhaps until it was as long as it had been when she first met Xena. That girl hadn't known any better. Maybe then she'd be able to-

"You won't."

Rough hands fastened on her shoulders and spun her around, re-gripping. Thumbs pressed into her collarbone. Her body remembered those thumbs, that implacable grip. Her eyes remained stubbornly closed. She didn't want to look at him, see his grief, be reminded of the sword-sharpness of her own. Distance was the only thing keeping her sane. If this was indeed sanity.

"I'll do what I please. Xena is gone, and I certainly don't owe you anything."

The pinch tightened, and she bit her lip at the pain until the pressure eased slightly.

"But you do owe me."

Her eyes flew open despite the resolution not to look. She searched his face, and the sorrow was there, but something else: anger, determination. She stubbornly refused to bow to it, didn't want to allow any part of it to touch her placid calm, but she couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice.

"I paid you back in full with the Fates. And look what good it did me - almost three more years. Well, awake. Twenty-five if you count-"

"Enough."

"-a bargain, really, when you-"

"ENOUGH." 

This time his anger stopped her; she felt perversely satisfied to have annoyed him.

His eyes narrowed, his lips quirked, his head moved slowly from side to side. She stared at him; her core was solid ice and deep down she wasn't afraid, she really wasn't. Yet at the surface, something was warming. Beginning to be terrified. Muscles spasmed, leg and abdominal, arm and back. Neck. She bit her lip against the spreading heat, fighting to keep one thought foremost: Why? Why was he bothering to do... whatever this was?

"You paid, yes. But not in full. There is another debt, now."

She refused to cry, or cry out. Even as her body inexplicably melted, her voice froze.

"Xena is gone, Ares. Nothing you do or say to me will change that. Nothing we do can hurt her or help her. This time nothing can get her back, I know that." Gabrielle straightened, tried to shrug her shoulders, but his grip remained. "I'm no longer part of your struggle with her. Wait a while, and I'm sure you'll have another go at her spirit. But not tonight." She turned her head, faced the water once more, and quietly repeated "Not tonight." 

Was she really the same person who had angrily responded to a vision of Ares - one that reminded her of tonight - when he said "life isn't worth it, it's a big fat zero" with "You're wrong, Ares"? 

She let her head pitch forward; beneath her, the sea was so black.

The hands released her shoulders only to slide up her neck and wrap around her skull. She felt her uneasiness spike into a moment of delicious fear - he was still a god, and she was still alive. Then she reminded herself... she didn't care about either of those facts.

He turned her head slowly back toward him, tipped it up implacably, even as she fought him.

When he kissed her, it felt like the ship lurched and had started to sink.

It wasn't a sad kiss, and she found that strange. It wasn't a desperate kiss, nor was it particularly demanding. It wasn't romantic. It wasn't searching. It was *not* comforting. It was sex. It was hot. It was life itself shoved back into her when she wanted nothing to do with it. Immortal life: the life of his form and the life of her soul.

She struggled.

His hands shifted as the ship rocked. She tried to wrench her head away as the grip changed, but there was little time. Now only one hand held the top of her spine, but still with a god's strength and a god's power; snapping her own neck would have been easier than moving away.

The other hand caressed her back, counted her vertebrae. It slid slowly down to mold her haunches and she shuddered, afraid for the first time that she might want this, or that he might be able to make her want this. As the part of her that had wondered "How long before he shows up" allowed her limbs to tense and relax in time with his stroking, another part of her mind began to whisper 'You used to know how to fight this god."

The kiss wouldn't stop. She couldn't stop it. His tongue kept invading. She tried to keep it out, and a few seconds later found her sucking on it mindlessly. Then she stiffened again, only to end up licking him back, again. She fought long minutes - against him, but also against herself - and thought, finally, she might have won.

But it was only Ares, pulling back.

"You'll live, because I won't let you die."

'Too', he meant. Not her too.

His voice was rough, and the words - spoken and unspoken, sliced through her like a dagger. They dissolved her knees. His hand released her neck at that moment and she fell to the deck. Two arms together slid down around her, lifted, and she again she pictured herself falling into the deep shadowed water below. Being dropped. Please. Yes. End it.

He stumbled with her in his arms - like a clumsy mortal might - aft toward her cabin. Perhaps it would have been more wargod-like to have rutted with her there in the open wind, but he was determined to have two things, neither of which 'rough and quick' was likely to gain him. He wanted her naked beneath him, golden and glowing, and for her to see that he wasn't simply pretending she was someone else.

And he meant to extract a promise. They'd meet again in a fortnight's time, or he wasn't letting her go at all. She'd be alive then, as she was now. 

One way or the other.


End file.
